Bakin' bread

Give us this day our daily joy..ahem, i mean...bread.

This here is the third homemade loaf to eventuate this week. My mother-in-law loaned me her bakers oven a couple of years ago and i've used it intermittently. We used to only get through a shop bought loaf every 3 days or so. Now with two guzzle gut rascals and Mr (I inhale bread) Stef (i must think of a better blog name for him...) its more like every 1.5 days. Our freezer is measely and small. I daren't go to the supermarket every day. I can pop in for a $3 loaf of bread and spend $50 - how does that happen? Our financial advisor, if we had one, would go to an early grave. So, I am trying to get into a rythym of baking bread. Simple steps. Honestly. Simple. It's just a breadmaker after all...

• Ingredients ready and prepared as per the instructions. Easy.
• In they go; wet ingredients first. Done.
• Dry ingredients next. A doddle.
• Close the lid. Next!
• Press start. Okey dokey then.
• 5 mins later - open lid, check it's mixing.
• 5 mins later. Open lid again, prod dough. Too hard, add more water.
• 5 mins later. Open lid. Curse that the dough is now too wet. Add more flour.
• 10 mins later. Be proud that i've left it 5 more mins than last time. Open lid.
• 10 mins later. BEEEP. Dough cycle done. Open lid, check dough. Hmm, is it okay?
• 30 mins later. Remove dough from pan, hand knead, hand shape and put in loaf tin.
• Leave said bread to rise, observing its rise every 3-4 minutes until done.
• Preheat oven
• Place loaf in hot oven.
• Check baking process every 3 minutes until done.

Now surely the key of having the breadmaker is to let the machine do everything? Yes? NO! Sorry. Didn't mean to shout. That's what your supposed to do, but I'm Stef. I'm the control freak. I can't just press start and leave it to do its thing and have a baked loaf ready for me in 3 hours. Nooooo. Nope. I don't even trust the blasted machine to bake the bread for me. I've got to remove the dough, knead it a few more times myself, shape and bake it in the oven. Yes, I open the door to the oven every 5 minutes too. Wrong I know, but I told you C-O-N-T-R-O-L freak.

Maybe just freak.

I'm taking baby steps to rectify this. One day, I will do the following.

• Ingredients in, wet first, dry next, lid closed, press start. Leave house. 3 Hours later. Fresh bread

For now I'm content that there's actually been 3 loaves baked this week. I'll call that an achievement and leave it at that shall I?